


The First Life Tim Marcoh Ever Saved

by jalendavi_lady



Series: Winry And Roy series from fma_fic_contest [14]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Canon - First Anime, Community: fma_fic_contest, Gen, Ishbal | Ishval
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-05
Updated: 2010-03-05
Packaged: 2017-10-13 05:22:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/133428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jalendavi_lady/pseuds/jalendavi_lady
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The missing moments before one of the Episode 15 flashbacks. Major Marcoh decides he's had enough of the military, the war, and Basque Gran.</p><p>Warning: this story concerns an in-canon attempted suicide.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The First Life Tim Marcoh Ever Saved

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the Ishbal (open word count) prompt at [](http://www.livejournal.com/users/fma_fic_contest/profile)[**fma_fic_contest**](http://www.livejournal.com/users/fma_fic_contest/) .

Major Marcoh stood in the shadows in an alley, watching the sand blowing across the wide street. He supposed it had been a market once, not all that many years ago, but the stalls were gone and the other signs it had once been a bustling area had long blown away.

He supposed it wasn't all that long before the State Alchemists were ordered in to bring the town as close to the bedrock as they could manage, and the sand would cover every sign of what had once been here.

It looked like it had been a pretty place once, even with the desert surrounding it and constantly invading the streets.

Not even 24 hours had passed since the town had been completely cleared out by the military, and already it was far enough behind the battle lines that no one was watching the building Marcoh was sheltering beside.

Colonel Gran had crossed a line yesterday, and Marcoh just couldn't stand it anymore.

Creating the red stones? The lives used in production were forfeit to the state anyway, he had always justified to himself even as he had ignored just what crimes once punishable by 40 years hard labor or life without parole had been made capital crimes since the current Fuhrer had risen to power.

The use of the red stones in combat? Far too many civilian deaths for Marcoh's taste, and there was something _wrong_ about using the essence of life to create such a vast amount of destruction. But who was Major Marcoh, a lowly State Alchemist who was clearly going to retire with the same rank he'd received on joining the military, to decide such things?

There were very few who knew about the truth of either program who agreed with him. He only knew of one potential true ally who might be willing to risk Gran's ire.

And that wet-behind-the-ears new recruit Mustang - he'd become a State Alchemist at age 18 nearly 19, bare _weeks_ before the Fuhrer ordered them into combat for the first time in a century, poor kid - was in even less of a position to act than Marcoh was, and too frightened by the hell unfolding around him and from him to worry about much beyond surviving to see another sunrise.

Except that everything had changed here, at this building, last night, and Marcoh had gotten to know the younger State Alchemist well enough to guess what would happen on this, a day the young man had been assigned as a day of leave weeks ago.

The first hours the young man had been outside of Gran's gaze since he'd been handed his orders yesterday morning.

And if Major Marcoh of Laboratory Five had compunctions against killing noncombatant civilians of his own people, how much stronger must they be in a young man who less than a year ago thought he'd be spending a long comfortable career writing purely academic treatises on the finer chemical details of combustion and amending Central City's fire codes?

Mustang had most likely nearly gotten _himself_ killed yesterday. There was every sign Gran would have executed him for treason, after a court martial or right there on the spot, if he had hesitated much longer than he apparently had.

Battle reflexes had done it, as near as Marcoh could tell. The wife had stepped forward, and Mustang had reacted just as the military had spent weeks training him to before sticking him on the train to the war zone.

But battle reflexes did nothing to aid the conscience at night.

Sure enough, booted footsteps echoed in the silent, abandoned street. It was only a minute later that Marcoh saw the young man walking towards him and the building, keeping as much as he could to the morning shadows.

His service revolver was at his hip. In his hand was a large bottle of some potent vodka. Marcoh didn't want to think about how much that kind of alcohol currently cost on the military black market, even the one the State Alchemists had access to, but if his guesses were right money hadn't been much of an issue to Mustang since yesterday evening.

Money only mattered to those with the intent to live long enough to spend it, after all, and if he was right...

If he was right, the goal was not to drink to forget, but rather to drink to disinhibit. To shut up the voice inside that said there might be a way to make the world bearable again.

That bottle was for drinking to enable suicide, and it meant Marcoh's plan had a wild hare-brained chance of working.

It meant the younger alchemist had both a desire to give his life in restitution for what he had done, and a desire to see the sunrise tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after...

And he would need _both_ to endure what needed doing.

Marcoh hid deeper as Mustang approached and stumbled into the building. It was clear he hadn't gotten any sleep worth calling by that name last night.

 _Nightmares, and time spent finding someone willing to part with that vodka,_ Marcoh reasoned.

It was also oh so importantly clear that the other alchemist had not been followed.

He waited until two full minutes after Mustang entered the building before he went in himself, carrying his packed bags with him.

They both knew exactly where they were going, after all. No need to keep the young man in view, just so long as Marcoh made it to the doorway upstairs _before_ Mustang finished that bottle.

Timing would be _everything_.

He'd taken what he could of the red stone research, and what of the stones had been unwatched and unguarded. The military would still have a few, but the way Gran and Kimblee were draining theirs those few would not last long at all.

Even if Mustang wouldn't help him, he was going to flee. He just needed Mustang's help to have half a chance at success - and to feel like there would be a voice of reason, no matter how alone, left behind in Ishbal.

He found his way to the doorway and hid, never entering sight of anyone inside the room.

Not that the lone person inside was paying much attention to anything beyond himself at the moment.

The safety strap of the holster had already been unfastened - with intent or not, Mustang had physically readied himself for the nearly inevitable moment.

That was what Marcoh needed to watch - not the man's face, but his gun.

Very little had been cleared out of the room. There were still supplies throughout the room and Marcoh would have given his last year's worth of research budget in a bet that there were still medical books on the shelf that was hidden past the door.

And there was a huge stain on the floor. It was clear that whoever had been ordered to clean up the mess had only done a half-hearted job, but what else could be expected when the commanders' minds were on spilling blood, and not on the blood that had already been spilled?

Mustang was clearly already far beyond tears, even as he fumbled with the bottle cap. He drank small swigs from the bottle - _as if he expected to chug it straight from the bottle all at once, and then found his throat too closed off for it_ , Marcoh thought silently.

Everything except Marcoh's presence pointed to a completed suicide attempt within the next twenty minutes. Less if Mustang's desire to leave guilt behind outweighed his mental comprehension of what that vodka was worth.

It didn't. The bottle dropped to the ground a few seconds after it was drained, and Mustang stood staring at the bloodstain in front of him.

 _Only a matter of time now._

Marcoh took a deep breath, trying to calm himself as much as possible.

 _I'm sorry,_ he told whatever spirits might still be lingering in this place. Not that he believed in ghosts per se, but he of all people in the world had to and did believe in distinct souls that did and could exist separate from the bodies that originally bore them. _I'm sorry you died, and I'm sorry that the first life I save in your memory **has** to be the one that took yours. But if you knew Mustang like I know Mustang..._

The look on the young man's face intensified quickly.

 _...I think you'd have wanted him to live, too._

And the hands Marcoh had been watching finally, convulsively, went for the gun.

"Stop that."

...

The vodka - which Mustang reported had been more water than anything else - was already working its way out of the man's system before Marcoh left.

The plan was in place for both of them, and Marcoh felt sure it would be quite a while before any second attempt - if the younger man ever made a second attempt on his own life at all.

Before Marcoh fled, he filled what empty space there was in his bags with a few of the medical supplies and, most importantly, the books. Not all of them, by any means, but enough.

Enough that it wouldn't cost too much to settle in somewhere quiet as a town doctor... and use the lives he himself had taken to preserve life instead of to take more, and let the Rockbells' books remain in the service of life instead of turning to dust in the desert.

And maybe, somehow, someday, the little bits of repayment he could manage would be close to an equivalent exchange for all of his sins.


End file.
